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Where are they gonna get 40K more suckers?
The Banksters' Depression will supply them, but they won't be banksters' kids.
90,000 Casualties, but Who’s Counting?
by Kelley B. Vlahos, November 10, 2009
Veterans Day arrives tomorrow, and with it, the anticipated harvest of heartbreaking anecdotes driving the press coverage and our ever wandering attention back to less desirable realities: the disfigured but persevering hero, the homeless warrior, the unemployable sergeant, the father or son or daughter who came home a stranger and cannot be reached.
Usually, there is nothing more powerful than a personal story to pound home the cost of eight years of war overseas, but I think today there is something even more disturbing to bear.
It’s the number 90,591 [.pdf].
As of Oct. 15, that’s how many American casualties there were in Iraq and Afghanistan since Oct. 7, 2001, when the Afghan war officially began. That includes a tire-screeching 74,782 dead, wounded-in-action, and medically evacuated due to illness, disease, or injury in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), and 15,809 and counting in Afghanistan, or Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).
That it may sound incredible – even unreal – is understandable. Early attempts to effectively count casualties (outside of battlefield fatalities) had been in earnest, then erratic, but finally dead-ended, frustrated by the Department of Defense, which has always been loath to break down and publicize the data on a regular basis.
One stalwart has always been Veterans for Common Sense (VCS), a nonprofit advocacy group dedicated to advancing the health and readjustment of returning soldiers and veterans. They’ve been diligently aggregating the statistics over time, and thanks to their diligent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, they can provide casualty reports at a level of detail not currently seen on the DOD’s publicly accessible Web site, DefenseLink.mil.
If we could access the data more easily, more people would know that 196 servicemembers took their own lives while serving in Iraq between March 2003 and Oct. 3, 2009, and there were 34 such suicides in Afghanistan. (These figures, of course, do not include the skyrocketing cases of suicides among all active-duty soldiers and veterans and cases of self-inflicted injury outside both war zones.)
More people would also know that 48,552 servicemembers had to be medically evacuated from the battlefield due to hostile and non-hostile injury, disease, and other medical issues since the beginning of the Iraq War [.pdf]. As of early October, 10,748 were evacuated for the same reasons from the war zone in Afghanistan [.pdf].
What the DOD does say, is that as of Nov. 4, there were 13,880 servicemembers wounded in action in Iraq who had not returned to duty, while 2,619 had left Afghanistan under the same conditions [.pdf]. That number is climbing faster. According to the Washington Post on Oct. 31, more than 1,000 were wounded in Afghanistan in the last three months, accounting for one-third of the total American casualties in OEF overall.
Thus, the troops are coming home, but in drastically varied degrees of wholeness. In Vietnam, there was one soldier killed for every 2.6 wounded.
The vast majority of soldiers are surviving their injuries today (approximately one killed in action for every 11.5 wounded in action, according to current stats for Afghanistan and Iraq), thanks to advanced body armor, better medevac transport, and mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles. But in tens of thousands of cases, their journey has just begun.
No one should be surprised, then, to hear that some 454,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have already sought medical care from the Veterans Administration (VA) when they came home. That’s 40 percent of the total OIF/OEF veteran population, which is a number that is of course in flux, considering that the war has no end and veterans have five years to apply for care after the end of their service.
As of this summer, of those veterans who sought healthcare at the VA, 45 percent were diagnosed with a mental health condition, according to VA statistics. Twenty-seven percent of these had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Based on available resources from the DOD and research by the RAND Corporation, VCS estimates that an estimated 370,000 (or 19.5 percent of) veterans have a traumatic brain injury (TBI) thanks to the high rate of accidents, roadside bombs, and other battlefield explosions and events – plus repeated deployments – in the war. VCS also estimates that some 18.5 percent of veterans come home with PTSD.
"This is very, very serious. The numbers are… bad, OK?" said Paul Sullivan, the bulldog director of VCS. "The good news is veterans are asking for care, and it’s good care. The bad news is there is 454,000 of them."
That’s tens of thousands of men and women and affected families and communities that are all but missing from the mainstream news any other time of the year. Sullivan said this is partly the military’s fault for obfuscating the statistics and working to keep the agony of sacrifice in the shadows.
"It’s still the policy of the United States to minimize concerns about postwar health," said Sullivan. Take the issue of soldiers coming home with chronic health problems allegedly caused by the toxic open-air burn pits in theater. One look at the online discussion boards and it’s clear something over there went awry. Vets are headed to VA facilities in droves with symptoms ranging from respiratory distress to sleep apnea and irregular heart conditions, but the Pentagon still refuses to admit a connection to their wartime exposures.
"They treat it as a public relations issue, not a health issue," Sullivan said. "In our view, we are tired of the government lying, and we’re done with the PR."
Larry Scott, who runs VAWatchdog.org, an invaluable daily monitor of ongoing issues affecting the 23.4 million living U.S veterans, said the 90,591 figure relating to OIF/OEF casualties is valid – and ultimately overwhelming. "People just forget, they don’t realize there is an ongoing cost of war. Whether you agree with the war or not is not the issue. We have to be ready to pay the price."
Looking at it in monetary terms – more numbers – may seem cold, but again, it puts the taxpayers’ burden into shocking perspective. Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz have identified two scenarios in their book, The Three Trillion Dollar War(2008). One scenario estimates a long-term cost of $422 billion to the federal government for veterans’ health care and disability compensation (given 1.8 million men and women deployed and troop levels falling below 55,000 by 2012). In the other scenario, the U.S. stays in Iraq and Afghanistan another eight years and 2.1 million men and women are deployed, with a price tag of $717 billion
Sullivan estimates that there are about 450,000 disability claims already filed with the VA on behalf of Iraq and Afghanistan vets, based on the official 405,000 figure announced back in February. He said there are approximately 80,000 new claims a month from veterans of all wars. As of Sept. 26, there were more than 951,217 pending claims by all veterans, including 200,679 claims pending appeal (the Veterans Benefits Administration recently reduced that number to 176,000, raising eyebrows at Sullivan’s group).
Rarely do we hear these figures over the din calling for even greater numbers of troops on the ground in Afghanistan. The generals want 40,000 or more, which would exceed the "surge" of 20,000 men and women into Iraq almost three years ago. Soldiers are finally withdrawing from that front only to be shifted to the other one for seemingly more hazardous duty.
"Where is the discussion about making sure that before we send any more troops overseas that we can take care of the veterans we already have and whether we can take care of another flood of them?" asked Sullivan.
Such discussions are indeed hard to come by. As Veterans Day nears, veterans are strangely absent, and for many of us, out of mind. Perhaps Sullivan’s question is best answered by Macy’s full-page Veterans Day sale advertisement in the Washington Post this week, featuring two well-dressed, shiny, happy, pretty people with a bugle and a drum. There are lots of numbers – 30% to 60% off storewide! – but not a veteran in sight.
Where are they gonna get 40K more suckers?
The Banksters' Depression will supply them, but they won't be banksters' kids.
thats a pretty alarming number
I believe the US soldiers lost is a little over 5,000 between both wars. This is a number I have heard. All the same, I would have a hard time sending any of my children right now.
Casualties include killed and wounded.
does 90K include PTSD or other mental injuries that the Army/Marines often refuse to admit and treat?
These brain-damaged vets are gonna kill themselves and other other Americans in numbers far greater than OBL/WTC, but just as long as Exxon-Mobil and friends get their slimy hands on that Iraqi oil, who cares?
It is a travesty that when this country goes to war, only a very small minority of us are actually affected by that, and actually sacrifice. Our country doesn't go to war; our military does - I just left a Veteran's day presentation at my children's elementary school; kids in the sixth grade stood up and told individual stories about their ancestors who were veterans; from the civil war forward.
ONE boy stood up and talked about his father - who is in Iraq RIGHT NOW, and is on a mission "away from the base." War is REAL to that kid, his dad, and his family; I only had to deal with a lump in my throat for a few seconds! , maybe I'll throw some popcorn, twinkies and razors in a box later and mail it to the US Army - then I'm doing my part!
Bull .
We need to:
1. DECLARE WAR - like the Cons ution says; voted on in Congress - "Our country is going to war with your country" - otherwise we don't fire a shot.
2. When we go to war, we go "all in" - win it as quickly, and with as little loss of American life as possible.
2. Spell out exactly what victory is, and when it is achieved; when those conditions are met; get out.
3. Pay for the war in real time with a war tax that exists for the duration - so that EVERY American pays it.
If we are asking SOME Americans to sacrifice SO MUCH it seems little to require those conditions be met.
(don't bother looking over my past posts for hypocrisy related to the above - you'll find it. My views on this have evolved over the past 8 years).
my father was a world war II vet who survived the battle of the bulge. he absolutely detested anything to do with war ever since then.
There's a figure for PTSD in the article. Did you read it?
I didn't get past the first page because it clearly appears as propaganda.
They take 35,725 wounded and 49,665 as part of the total. However, there will be overlap between those numbers and they cannot simply be added. The 35k number refers ti "wounded in action" and the 49k number refers to "medically evacuated". To get a true number, you cannot count that wounded number twice, which is the case when they are also evacuated.
that report.
I.e., non-combat related medical evacuations.medically evacuated due to illness, disease, or injury
They're still in theater, and they still count as casualties.
No double counting that I can see. Your powers of reading seem to have failed you again, WC.
WH, do you even parse what you read for accuracy, or do you post propaganda if you like how it reads?
Something I haven'e figured out.
How can you have 370,000 soldiers with Tramatic Brain Injury if you only have 37,725 soldiers wounded?
Could you please explain that?
*Estimated* injuries by VCS. Admittedly that's a bit funky, but it's upfront about what it is. It doesn't pretend to represent reported injuries, but just gives an estimate of the possible scale of injuries.Based on available resources from the DOD and research by the RAND Corporation, VCS estimates that an estimated 370,000 (or 19.5 percent of) veterans have a traumatic brain injury (TBI) thanks to the high rate of accidents, roadside bombs, and other battlefield explosions and events – plus repeated deployments – in the war. VCS also estimates that some 18.5 percent of veterans come home with PTSD.
Those are very good rules. I remember in 2005, how the at ude of the OIF had changed so drastically in two years. Also I would say that if we all go, then we all go! No exceptions for college, or only child, etc. I would love for us to have some kind of service obligation, although I am still unsure if I would feel comfortable with a law. 2. I want the President to have a strategy and know what victory is, but I don't think we have to know. Security wise3. My only problem is like Rumsfeld said 'We go to war with the army we have, not the army we want.' Im not sure if that's the exact quote, but what I mean is we should invest in money for a war that's not happening yet. Also it would be ridiculous that we cannot give the best of the best as far as equipment and vehicles and weapons for our soldiers but are willing to go in debt over medicare and medicaid.
you can't make kids fight in a war for reasons that are manufactured.
His point is we would not get into wars as often. I know my mom completely changed her stance on the war in Iraq when she found out I was going. It makes sense.
thats a nice story, but i was responding to your post, so....
What instance are you referring to? What was manufactured?
put down the water and stop playing the roll of a stupid troll.
Aluminum tubes, mobile chemlabs, yellacake.
Yep, shoulda listened to the Dems. Oh, , wait a minute.
oh good. darrin agrees.
I did.
They were wrong too.
None of them started the war.
Bush did.
How was that fabricated?
what a good little boy scout.
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